Sharansky’s Foolish Support for Iran Sanctions

Is the Free World, led by Washington, so fixated on a short-term deal with the latest media-hyped dictator as to miss altogether the real opportunity held out by the present moment?

It’s not entirely clear what Sharansky thinks the “real” opportunity is, but he seems to believe that if the U.S. and other Western governments just “stand firm” in strangling Iran economically that the regime will collapse. That’s a huge assumption, and it doesn’t have any evidence to support it. In most important respects, Rouhani isn’t anything like Gorbachev. He doesn’t have the same authority that Gorbachev had, and he isn’t in a position to implement changes at home that would lead to the regime’s dissolution. Betting on forcing regime collapse through continued economic pressure is foolish, and it perpetuates a needlessly cruel policy.

Another major difference from the Soviet experience is that many Iranian dissidents and human rights advocates object to the sanctions already imposed on their country, and they are adamantly against the imposition of additional sanctions. As they often do, sanctions have been suffocating middle-class Iranians and weakening the Iranian opposition, which in turn makes internal political reform less likely to happen. Refusing to provide even the slightest sanctions relief does these Iranians no favors, and instead it actively harms and undermines the opposition. The hard-liners most convinced that Iran’s current regime is on the “edge” of collapse are advocating the policies that will help the regime stifle and smother its domestic opposition. In doing so, they help to ensure that Iran’s current leaders can more easily retain their hold on power, and they are helping to delay political change inside Iran.

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10 Responses to Sharansky’s Foolish Support for Iran Sanctions

People like Sharansky are the main reason that dissident movement in USSR, and now in Russia, was and is always looked at with a desire to use anti-bacterial soap and shower, even when not having the physical contact.

We learn from our own experiences, but we don’t always learn wisely. Sharansky, persecuted by communist bureaucrats, fetishizes “democracy,” which turns out to be a foolish notion in his part of the world.

I believe the opposite here as the long term economic sanctions on Iran could diminish during the next several years. At this point, oil is relatively high enough to where either China or India tells the US to stuff the sanctions and starts buying directly from Iran. Although China at first look would be the obvious choice, but the recent mini-crash of the ruppee last summer would give India a lot incentive to buy (more?) cheap Iranian oil.

Amazing that anyone can still really take Sharansky as some paladin of democracy. Does he really believe that the Iranian people would be in favor of renouncing their right (under the NPT, which Israel hasn’t even signed) to enrich uranium?

Nuts. Indeed, it’s even a good question as to why in the world would they even renounce the right to have nuclear weapons given Israel’s possession of same. But of course Sharansky’s thinking is clear: It’s only *Israelis* who are entitled to want such weapons; no-one else of course can be trusted to use them in a moral fashion.

Moreover, it’s a little funny seeing this democracy fetishist sitting there talking like this all the while being part of a regime that has been sitting and holding the whip hand for decades now on some millions and millions of utterly and formally disenfranchised individuals.

Collin, it’s already been reported a while back that India has been buying Iranian oil and flouting the sanctions. (An erstwhile “ally”, India might well be exasperated by the alliance of convenience between the US and their archenemy Pakistan.) The decaying fortunes of the EU might well lead to them breaking off to secure their own deals. The “sanctions regime” ain’t what it used to be.

Suppose it were true that continuing or increasing world sanctions imposed upon Iran would lead to the collapse of its government. Why is it assumed this would be a desirable outcome? The security of the West, certainly the United States, was not enhanced by the forced removal of the Saddam regime in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Khaddafi in Libya, and now the threatened removal of Assad in Syria. Quite the opposite. Each of these instances of regime change has cost the United States dearly in blood, wealth, domestic discontent and the diminution of America’s prestige in the community of nations. I can’t imagine that another revolution in Iran, with all the violence and regional instability that would come with it, is more likely to add to Western security than did even the relatively low cost “Arab Spring” in Egypt, much less the other disastrous military engagements.

And besides, what if the regime did collapse? What then? The problem with neo-cons is that they never think through the next step, the second and third-order consequences. Like William Dalton points out, what benefit would another Iranian revolution be to us? Do you really think there is some sort of proto-liberal stable Western-friendly democracy just waiting in the wings? Like as not, two or more factions of real extremists will battle for control, with repercussions for the wider region. Better the devil you know. It may not be our complete preference, but least Iran is currently a relatively stable coherent polity in control of its borders.